Vocal Intelligence | Barbara McAfee | Master Voice Coach

Your voice is giving people information about you before they can even explain what they’re sensing. Confidence, warmth, authority, empathy, tension, curiosity, even sincerity in an apology often lands through tone of voice, not vocabulary. We sit down with voice coach, author, and performer Barbara McAfee to get practical about what’s really happening when we speak and how to change it without becoming fake or “performing” a personality. 

Barbara shares her Five Elements of Voice framework, a body-based map for flexible communication skills: Earth for grounded boundaries and calm authority, Fire for passion and presence, Water for heart-led empathy, Metal for clear projection without vocal strain, and Air for storytelling, imagination, and spiritual connection. We talk about why most of us get stuck in one or two default modes, how culture and conditioning shape our sound, and how a small vocal shift can change the room and your own nervous system in the process. If you care about leadership presence, public speaking, coaching, teaching, or simply being understood at home, this is a toolkit you can use immediately. 

Then we zoom out to something bigger: community singing and oral tradition. Barbara explains why singing with others creates connection that can’t be replicated by a “perfect” solo performance, how groups learn to listen as one organism, and why shared sound can become a form of community care and even peaceful resistance. If you’ve ever felt locked inside your head, harmony is a path back into your body and back to each other. 

If this conversation gives you a new way to hear yourself, subscribe for more, share it with a friend who’s working on confidence or communication, and leave a review so more people can find it. Which of the five voice elements do you want to practice first?

Connect with Barbara through her website at https://www.barbaramcafee.com/

Let's connect on social media! You can find me @ _journeytowell
Be sure to reach out and say hello 🤍

Book your Intro to Human Design Chart Reading here!
Ready to dive deep? Explore our signature 1:1 coaching experiences ALIGN or EMBODY here!

Craving guidance, expansion or  growth?  Let's connect.
https://journeytowell.net
Book your 1:1 virtual Soma+IQ™ Breathwork session or Human Design chart reading, learn more about my coaching packages & find Seacoast NH in person events - all on my website  ⬆️

be well, my friend
xx Hannah

Transcript

Welcome And Why Voice Matters

SPEAKER_01 1:11

Hello, welcome back to the podcast Journey to Well. My name is Hannah. Today I love podcasts where I get to have a conversation about things that honestly most people probably don't know about me. And one of those things is I sang a lot in high school. I took voice lessons, I sang opera, I was in operas, I was in my high school musicals, I was in all of my high school choirs. And today we get to have a conversation about using your voice. And I am joined with Barbara McAfee today. She's a voice coach, an author, a speaker, a performer with over over 30 years of experience helping people unlock their full voice, blending practical vocal techniques and powerful tools for authentic, flexible, and unforgettable self-expression. And one of my favorite things, Barbara, we were talking right before we hit record about this conversation, is it's not about being a performer or being a musician. And I think when we think music, especially using your voice, maybe it's because I am a musician or a former musician and I love singing that I always think of that like let's perform, but how can we tap into our voice if we're not, if we don't see ourselves as a singer, if we don't see ourselves as a performer, that's not in interest of us. I think there's still such a relevant conversation to be had in using your voice and discovering your voice. And you have a really cool framework. So I'm so excited about this conversation. But thank you first of all for coming on. Thank you for sharing your time and your voice to come on this podcast and share your expertise and your story with with our community. Um, and I like to hand over the reins, just a little introduction of who are we going to learn from today? Who is Barbara McAfee?

SPEAKER_03 3:07

Thank you so much, Anna. It's a joy to be here. And you're right, most people, when I say I'm a voice coach, they say, Oh, do you teach singing? And yeah, like, what are we doing right now? We're actually talking to each other.

SPEAKER_12 3:21

And I have to say, if you had a voice kind of like this, you know, I imagine you wouldn't have very many listeners to your podcast. You know, our voices are affecting each other all the time.

SPEAKER_03 3:36

In fact, you know, your listeners probably were assessing my credibility, my likability, um, all kinds of stuff about me just by the sound of my voice. And we're doing that all the time. And so one of the things I have to start with when I am working with people on voice is to open a bigger frame. You know, because it's not just talking, it's not just singing, it's the way you sound. And tone has so much to do with whether we're connecting or we're not connecting. You know, we've all had the apology that didn't sound quite right. I'm sorry. It's like, uh well, the words are correct, but the tone is telling you the truth that you are not a bit sorry. You're just mad. So um so I like to bring a bigger awareness to voice in general and how it connects to all aspects of our lives our vocation, our spirituality, our relationships, our effectiveness in giving our gifts to the world. All of it kind of hinges on voice. And so I feel like sort of a oh, I don't know, kind of a preacher about, hey, wake up. There's there's all this stuff in here. Your voice wants to help you. Let's help it help you.

SPEAKER_01 5:05

One of the things that I do in my business that I that I think we probably hopefully talked about is human design. And as you're saying this, actually, I just made a really cool connection. Um, Barbara is a four-six emotional generator for those of you that know a little bit about human design and like learning more. But in human design, one of the things that we say is that all of you have human design centers, kind of like the chakra system, and all of your centers are eventually leading out to your throat energy center or chakra, whatever you want to call it in human design, it's energy center, and all of them, like your two head centers lead down to your throat, all of your lower centers lead out, because eventually all of that energy, whether you're talking about like your sacral center of that power and that um authority and your your intuition, you want that eventually to come up and out to be expressed. And that's really cool that that's really the um focus of your work is allowing people to find their voice. And I watched your TED talk, so I know like you I love all of the different voices and like the examples that you give. Um, and having that uh having that tool to work on your self-expression. You're making me laugh because one of the things I always tell my partners is whenever I have something really serious, like if I have something that has kind of been bothering me, I'll always talk to them in like this very like stern voice. And I and it's not necessarily how I mean for it to come out, it just is. And then I mean it's a serious conversation, but I don't want to feel like I'm like, you know, really being like aggressive towards someone when I'm talking about something serious. But you're you're making me laugh when you're giving some of those examples because that's what came to mind for me of like I don't know how to fix that. So is that something that that people work with you too? Of like their mode of tone and and expression? Yes.

SPEAKER_03 7:21

Okay, and a lot of people are looking for the perfect thing, which you know, guess what? It the perfect voice for talking to your poodle is not a perfect voice for talking to your boss, um, for instance. Uh and so what I try to do is bring more awareness, first of all, and flexibility and choice and pleasure. So most of us are living in a tiny little part of our voice that was constructed not really on purpose. I mean, those of us who have some singing or acting training, maybe we've thought about it a little bit, but most of us use this crucial thing, and I love how the in the human design it it confirms that truth, that you can have all these gifts around inside of you great ideas, great instincts, creative projects, and if it can't get out to another human being, it's not gonna happen. And that breaks my heart. I think of all the circumstances in the world that limit people giving their gifts. Maybe they're living in a war zone, or they're living in poverty, or they somehow have been hurt in a way that they can't open up their mouths and make a sound. And I've worked with a lot of those people over the years too. Um, and they can heal. But most of us just think, well, this is just how it is. You know, I I can't do this. But those of us that do have some choices and have some privilege, uh, we could actually open up our voice in a way that would allow our gifts to come into the world. And a lot of us have the gift of bringing other people's gifts into the world. Like I think of myself as a midwife a lot. You know, it's not my it's not my your voice is not my baby, but I'll help you get it out.

The Five Elements Framework

SPEAKER_01 9:15

Oh, I like that actually analogy. So one of the frameworks that you built is like the five elements. So I really want to lay that foundation because I love how you incorporate these five elements with your voice uh and how you're projecting and your tone and your conversation style. So, can you introduce those to our listeners today?

SPEAKER_03 9:42

Absolutely. I would love to. I've been doing this for so long and I never get tired of it. It's just like super fun. So I that there's a few underlying premises uh for this framework. And one is that we start with sound, beyond speaking, beyond singing, and in the realm of sound. And most of us don't go there very much, maybe if we yawn in the morning or if we hit our thumb with a hammer, we'll make some noise, or yelling at a rock concert or something. But most of us live in a pretty narrow band of expression, and so rather than make a small change, I like to invite people to make a big one. And another premise is that we pretend to be someone that we're not, because that shakes loose our very cherished but probably way too small story about who we are. Oh, I'm an introvert, I'm a woman, I'm this, I'm that. Um it's like, yeah, that's fine. What else have you got? You know, there's a bigger story for all of us all the time.

SPEAKER_01 10:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 10:43

Right. So the character can kind of help you shake out of who you think you are, and then you go out there and you go, like, oh, wait a minute, I can't go back into the same story. It's too small for me. So it's uh the voice is a practical, you know, this is a practical application, but it's also quite transformational. Like you discover things maybe that have been exiled or lost along the way. So those are a couple of the assumptions. So uh and it kind of aligns nicely to your human design stuff because each of the five voices connects or is sourced in a different part of the body. So voila. And I use the chakra system, but it's you know, it's a body, and these are elements, and they kind of, you know, they're everywhere. So uh each one correlates with a part of the body, and we'll make a little sound. You can join if you want, um or not. You're you're a grown woman, you can decide what you want to do. Um, so we'll have a silly version of it, and then I'll talk a little bit in that voice in my everyday speech and tell you what it's good for. So that's that's what we'll do.

SPEAKER_01 11:53

Cool.

SPEAKER_03 11:54

So we'll start with earth, and that is sourced, as you might imagine, in the feet, legs, hips, genitals, butt, all the lower body. And to isolate and exaggerate that sound, we're gonna be bears. It's coming on spring as we're recording this, so I'm imagining we're just we just woke up and we're kind of itchy and hungry. Yeah. It's very deep and dory. And if people are having a hard time finding it, you can just pretend you can just voice your yawn.

SPEAKER_00 12:37

Oh, that's a good one.

SPEAKER_03 12:39

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I can feel that, like, I feel like my body's a cello when I'm making that sound. It's all this vibration down in my my body. And so if I take that kind of goofy sound and I bring it into how I would normally talk, this is my earth voice. It's not that different from my regular speaking voice because it's one of my dominant voices. Most of us have usually two that we kind of favor. A combination of it. And earth is one of mine. And it's good for lots of things, including getting really grounded. So the old and the chant in the yoga tradition, it's like that's what it is, and it does calm you down. That'll just reset your whole nervous system. It's also good for projecting authority. So, a lot of women, I've worked with so many women over the years, and a lot of them don't know how to get into this part of their voice. And it's great for like setting a boundary. No. Please stop interrupting me. I'm not done talking. It's also good for training dogs, but that's a whole nother thing. I love that. Down, down, you know, and the dog's like, what? You saw something. Yeah. Yeah. And then the third thing it's good for is reconnecting us to our gut instinct. So in order to really access those deep, open, yawning sounds, we have to soften and deepen into our core, into our belly, our guts. And that kind of animal intelligence is always available to us, but most of us are going too fast or zipping around in our neocortex. And so I think this is not scientific at all, and I absolutely know it to be true, like intuitively and from years of watching, is that if you can settle into that part of your body, that voice, that gut, that other brain will be able to connect to you, and you might make better choices.

SPEAKER_01 15:00

Wow. I love that. I I wonder if that's one of my predominant voices, because I definitely like that and grounding, like when you said that, I was like, oh, that makes so much sense. Like it just settles really well.

SPEAKER_05 15:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:20

Yeah. So, and it's not always great because it can also be a little dull or monotone. You know, I had a client I worked with years ago. I read about him in my book, and he saw himself on a video saying, We're very passionate, I'm very passionate about the work we do. And he was, but he was an introverted white man from North Dakota. You know, and so his way of looking excited looked like one step from a coma. Oh my gosh. And he saw it, he was just horrified. And so he came to work with me, and we got we got him, you know, more acquainted with other parts of his voice. But before we did, I said, so tell me, are you the person in the room who stays calm when everyone else is kind of losing their minds? And he's like Yep. And they smile, you know, like if she saw me. And so I'm not suggesting that we use these elements to make judgments about people. I I don't we don't need more fuel for that, but it might help us ask smarter questions. So that gift that he has in being calm and steady and grounded is great until he's trying to talk about being passionate. And then it's kind of silly.

Fire Voice For Presence And Power

SPEAKER_01 16:40

Right? And that brings us into the next one, right? Which is fire. Fire. Yes, passion. Fire.

SPEAKER_03 16:46

Yes, fire is sourced in your belly and solar plexus. And you've heard the phrase fire in the belly. Well, this is all about that. It is about passion. And so to isolate and exaggerate this one, I think we'll just have a little call and response pasta opera.

unknown 17:01

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 17:02

Okay. Rigatoni.

SPEAKER_04 17:07

Mostacholi!

SPEAKER_00 17:10

Masta joli.

SPEAKER_03 17:12

Lasagna! Lasagna! Yeah, basically it's kind of yelling, right? It's a Tarzan yell. You know, it's all that kind of energy. And it the way it sounds in my voice normally is the way I'm talking right now, because this is my dominant voice, especially when I'm presenting or teaching or in a conversation like this. And it's good for expressing, yes, passion. It's also really good for taking up space, for being seen and heard. Great for public speaking.

SPEAKER_11 17:46

Right?

SPEAKER_03 17:47

And it's also really good for waking up the body. So when we do a longer warm-up, uh people start taking off layers. They literally get physically hot. And I did about 10 minutes of taekwondo back in the day. I didn't want to hit anyone, so I kind of ran out of steam. But I loved the yelling. Yeah! You know that.

SPEAKER_10 18:10

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:12

That was really healing for a person who was raised to be very quiet.

SPEAKER_01 18:16

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 18:17

Um, to be like full extension, all my energy all the way out. And now I actually have a lot of people do that kind of punching. I teach them a just a simple punch in Kia. Because a lot of us are kind of noodly, you know, we don't quite know how to get our energy all the way out to the other side of the room.

SPEAKER_01 18:37

So that's that must be a good one. Yeah. Like especially, um I'm definitely imagining for people that are really quiet. I don't know. I was told when I was a kid I was too loud, so I don't know that that was ever, ever my issue. Um, I mean, definitely the not speaking my mind or holding back, but as far as my vocal quality. But but I really like I really like this one a lot. I like it's fun too. It is fun. It's fun.

SPEAKER_03 19:09

Yeah. It can be really terrifying for people.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:13

You know, to be that visible and big, and people think of it as being angry. Yeah. A lot of those, you know, my I I have a few triggers left. I've been working a long time, but you know, those guys that go zipping around through traffic. Yeah. You know, and I like make loud fire sounds when they do that.

SPEAKER_01 19:36

Oh, smart. It makes sense too, though, with the Italian even example. Like ital, you know, Italians, they're very aggressive sounding even, like when they're just speaking. Isn't that a joke? I don't know if that's a stereotype, but I am Italian, so I think it's okay.

SPEAKER_03 19:53

No, and it's aggressive. I have a friend from New York City, and she talks like really loud all the time. You know, it's loud in New York City. Yeah. So uh we can get loud for various reasons. One guy I worked with was a carpenter who worked outside, and that's how he communicated, and then he moved into an office and was supposed to supervise people and deal with upset customers. Not helpful.

SPEAKER_01 20:20

Yelling at them.

Water Voice For Empathy And Care

SPEAKER_03 20:22

No, it was it wore people out, and he just he had other choices, but he just got kind of stuck there, and we opened up other choices, and he had a naturally big voice. He ended up falling in love with singing as a way to kind of move some of that energy uh along, and like his uncle was an opera singer, so he had I think he just had a naturally big voice to begin with. Yeah, but we gave him some other choices, which one of which is the next element, which is water. Water is sourced in the heart and throat area. And to isolate and exaggerate this one, let's see, what shall we do? I think we're gonna howl like wolves.

SPEAKER_01 21:06

Okay. I feel that.

SPEAKER_03 21:20

You feel it? Yeah. I like to imagine that it's like the yawn feeling of the of the earth voice. But it's higher. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 21:32

Oh, I like that.

SPEAKER_03 21:33

Yeah, yeah. And another person I use a lot is Julia Child. Yeah. You know, because she was just so wonderful. And I'm six foot two, and she was very tall, also. And her um beloved husband of many years called her Big Sprig, which I think is adorable. Um, but she was such an enthusiast, you know, and a late bloomer, and gosh, I just admire her. And such a strange voice, you know, to be a famous person.

SPEAKER_04 22:03

Yeah. But if I take that woo into my normal voice, how I might normally talk, this is my water voice.

SPEAKER_03 22:11

And you can hear it's a little warmer and uh a little more flowing and gentler, and uh basically it's good for anything your heart has to say. So a lot of people who are in the healing work um who work more intimately with people, like coaches, therapists, healers, yoga teachers, chaplains. Um you're like with people who are having a hard time, but this is kind of you're making the sound right now, Hannah. You're so good.

SPEAKER_01 22:47

A little imitator.

SPEAKER_03 22:48

No, no, no. And I think we do that sound a lot, like if we heard something hard. A lot of people put their hand on their heart and they go, Oh, yeah. Oh no, that's so hard. Oh. So it's like, oh, it's the voice of the heart. So it's good for expressing empathy, compassion. Affirmation. Good job. Oh, it's so good to see welcome. Gosh. So it it makes people feel warmly welcomed and seen and loved. And it's wonderful for all of those things. And it's just horrible for other things, like setting a boundary. Not great.

SPEAKER_01 23:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:29

Or public speaking. Right?

SPEAKER_01 23:33

Or those people that talk to you all the time in that voice, it would that one be an example of um like someone that kind of is like talking to you like a like a kid or like you're a little kid a lot? Could be oh, it's so good to meet you.

SPEAKER_03 23:49

That might be air.

SPEAKER_01 23:51

Air, okay. Yeah. Okay, almost a little bit.

SPEAKER_03 23:53

Air and water sometimes get mixed together for talking to kids or babies and singing lullabies and things like that. But it could be that way. And um another kind of interesting fact that I figured out along the way is that if people make so and they cry, so do you hear the water in that? Yeah. Right? And so it's like the water, that water is in the expression of the sadness, and it's also in the comforting. And that happens in the plant world. Like, you know, the poison ivy is right next to the thing that helps the poison ivy. Fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 24:33

That's really touching. Wow. I like that. Thank you. Thank you for that connection. That's really cool.

Metal Voice For Clear Projection

SPEAKER_03 24:40

Okay, we have two to go. Yeah. Hanging in there? Yes. Next we have metal. And metal is sourced in the eye and forehead area, the mask. And to isolate and exaggerate this, we did the we did the wolves, so now we have to go into the feline to just make everybody happy. We're gonna be cats. Irritable Sinese cats. So it's very nasal. You're such a good cat.

SPEAKER_01 25:16

I have the hardest time actually as you're speaking on this. I'm remembering, like I took singing lessons, and I think a lot of, at least from what I recall, when I sing, a lot of my voice is like back, and I can almost get like stuck in the like back throat. And so we've done exercises, and like one of the images that my singing teacher would give me is like, imagine that you're like shooting it out of like either your nose or like your forehead.

SPEAKER_09 25:46

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 25:47

I can't do it. Like, I don't know. I feel like that one's my least easily connectable one for me. Is like all of I mean I can scrunch my nose and I can like make it like but when I'm like using well, tell yeah, I guess tell me how we would use that in voice in conversational speech.

SPEAKER_03 26:07

It's a little goes a long way. I kind of think of it as like the cayenne pepper on the spice rack. So um if I take that and it's more like here, it's a way to get very loud without vocal strain. So I had the great gift of being my mom's caregiver for 15 years until she died at almost 95. And now and then she would lose a hearing aid. And I could go and hang out with her for an evening, and I could talk like this, and she could hear me just fine. Or if I'm in a loud, crowded place. And even last night I was doing some song leading with a group of about 15 people, and I didn't have a mic. So I could, you know, they're all singing, and I say, okay, one more time. Okay. Right? Sports coaches do this all the time, if they're especially if they're outside. All right, listen up, we're gonna do another round. You know, it's just this bright, it's the cheapest sound in them all. It takes a tiny bit of energy, air, and it makes a heck of a lot of noise.

SPEAKER_01 27:12

I like that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:14

And it is really helpful for projecting your voice. Um, if people get vocally tired, you know, sometimes people, if they talk in their earth voice or water voice, and they're talking a lot, and that that that the earth voice is expensive. Takes a lot of air to make any noise, and it doesn't carry. And so I would worked with this woman who would do these three-day trainings, and at the end her voice would just be trashed because she was mostly water and air, uh earth, and was trying to push and push and push. And so I just we worked together to help her kind of wake up a little more of her metal. It doesn't take much, but it just kind of lifted it out of her throat and used the well, the holes in her head to kind of project it more simply.

SPEAKER_01 28:03

I like it, sounds like higher, you know, like I feel like when you start speaking that way, it's like, ooh, let me sit up. Yeah. That's how I feel.

SPEAKER_03 28:11

Yeah, in a lot of uh places where um there are mountains, this is how people sing. Uh, in the Appalachians. I am a poor stranger. And then the Balkan women's choirs, they all have that very nasal quality. So it's fascinating to me that when there are mountainous regions, and even country music, you might not be in the mountains, but there's big open spaces.

SPEAKER_10 28:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 28:44

I think it's so fascinating that humans um change their voice to in response to geography, to the landscape.

SPEAKER_06 28:55

That's wild.

SPEAKER_03 28:56

Isn't that wild?

SPEAKER_06 28:57

That's really cool. Okay, the last one which is air.

SPEAKER_03 29:04

That's sourced in the crown and above it. And for this one, I think we are just gonna say hi to the pets and the babies.

SPEAKER_05 29:11

Because that's kind of how they can be. Yeah, hi baby.

SPEAKER_06 29:15

I can do that one all day. How I talk to dogs.

SPEAKER_03 29:20

Yeah, dogs, really, they're just fake babies.

SPEAKER_06 29:22

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 29:24

When I was when I do this in a group, I was with a group in Atlanta of of leaders in this large company teaching this as a leadership tool. It comes in really handy as a leader to be able to, you know, listen well and speak well and be flexible. And so when I was teaching, when I was teaching this, I said, okay, I'm gonna count to three, and I want you to talk to your pets to your girl or the young bate young children in your lives.

SPEAKER_12 29:50

And I go one, two, three, and the whole room is like, oh my god, how am I gonna you know we all laugh because that's often where we go.

SPEAKER_05 29:59

Yeah, who's a good girl? Who's a good girl?

SPEAKER_03 30:02

So uh if I take that little voice and I bring it down into how am I girly dog? This is my ear voice. And this is a hard sell to a lot of people, serious people. But it's good for some practical things like storytelling. Let me tell you a story about that. It's very intriguing, right? And I can be talking along in my normal voice and say, I have an idea. Which is very different than I have an idea. I think this voice kind of wakes up the the imagination, the possibilities, the infinite. So it's good for those things, storytelling and possibilities, and then it's also really good for connecting to the world of spirit. I mean, even the word spirit, respiration, the wind, I mean, there's all these correlations between the breath and the infinite. So this is the one I hated a version. And I still can get like, you know, I have a wonderful friend and I love her to pieces. She lives out in California, but she talks like this a lot. She's like a really spiritual person.

SPEAKER_06 31:21

Oh.

SPEAKER_03 31:22

And I, you know, I know she's sincere and I absolutely love her. And I can tell I still have more healing to do because the voices that drive you a little crazy are the ones that probably have the most gifts for you. And this was the case for me, for the air voice. I didn't think this was had anything to do with a six foot two-inch brunette, just a strong, smart woman. And also it was too vulnerable. It was too childlike and undefended, and all of us had to grow too fast. So a lot of us want to get the heck out of there. And that softness and sweetness and elegance and sexiness and the sense of wonder, it all came back and brought some really great gifts to me. And I sing with it all the time. I could hear it in my recordings, and so I mean, I love the fire and I love that you know, big that big voice thing, but it's really great. You know, like uh I was just listening to a friend of mine sing uh something from Brazil, a baza nova in Portuguese.

SPEAKER_05 32:38

Chicago.

Choosing The Right Voice On Purpose

SPEAKER_03 32:41

God, that feels good to sing that. So super great. Until it isn't like all of them, right? So there you have it, the five elements. Fire, water, battle, air.

SPEAKER_06 32:57

That's like a I don't know, that's like a party trick, I feel like to be able to do all of those that quickly.

SPEAKER_01 33:03

I mean, obviously you've been talking about them for a long time, but I really like this, and I like that you bring up the point of they're all really great and really bad, and depending on the situation, or really inappropriate, however you want to label it. I don't like saying bad, but um depending on the situation, and I think just that and being aware of I I mean, there's so many tools of like, am I going into a business meeting? Do I want to sound very confident and authoritative? And what voice can I use for that? Or am I talking to a baby and I want to sound very uh comforting? To me, that sounds like air is very comforting to me, but I also do think I speak in that way. Like again, when I'm I've I've spent a lot of time around babies and animals in my life, so maybe that's why it's comforting. But do I want to sound very comforting or inspiring, or do I want to be able to really project? I mean, there's so many ways that we can just use such a simple framework in shifting just a little bit, and like it's not wild, you know, it's not like you have to study this for years, or you have to know so many things. It's just five elements. And I I mean, because like you, because I'm aware of the chakra system and I'm I'm well versed in it, it does make a lot of sense, and even just air, right? Like that's where we connect to spirit through our crown chakra. So you can use the chakra to remind you of oh, what's that voice again? Oh, right, it's the one to connect to the divine, to connect upward, and yeah, super cool.

SPEAKER_03 34:54

Yeah, and I've I mean, I've tried it, I've been working with oh, I don't know, thousands of people over the years, and I have a friend who works a lot in the international schools where there are people literally from all around the world, and he's been incorporating this because they're all teachers, and boy, you need to be able to come in and connect with your students if you're going to learn anything. So he's been incorporating this into his teaching. And I interviewed him for my most recent book, Vocal Intelligence, and I I said, So have you run into any cultural differences? You know, because he's been in the Middle East, but they're in the schools, there are people from Asia, from Europe, from all over the South America, all over the place. And he's like, No, these are just these are so basically human. And different cultures do favor different things, you know, sort of I talk differently because I was born and raised in Minnesota. And you know, I have that kind of I I I don't have a real thick Minnesota accent. Like my my sister-in-law, oh my gosh, she's got like this incredible metal voice and a very thick Minnesota accent. But um, I sound different than my friends from Boston and my friends from California and my friends from I do sound a lot like my Canadian friends, but there's a lot of different influences.

SPEAKER_01 36:21

That's one of my questions when you're going through it is our our default, like you said, we we kind of tend to default to one or two of them. Is that through conditioning, or is that through just our innate personality who we were born as?

SPEAKER_03 36:40

Oh heavens, so many things. I sound philosophical. Well, really, there's uh physiology. I'm a tall person with a deep voice, and I come from tall people with deep voices. So my niece sounds so much like me, and she's also 6'2. So there is physiology, genealogy, all of that. And region, yes, but so often it's uh wounds, you know, being uh shushed, told you, told to move your lips in the choir. I mean, if I had a nickel for every time somebody was told to move their lips in the choir, it's like who are these people and why do we let them near our children, right? Oh and um and then there's all the gender stuff, you know. If if you're supposed to be a woman, you're supposed to live in the water, you're just supposed to be there for everybody all the time and not have any needs, and just you know, uh so there's and then there's uh popular culture. Um I've had a lot of people wanting to talk to me about the Vogel Fry and uh Kardashians, I guess, kind of brought in, and um, it's like that makes me cringe. I know, me too.

SPEAKER_01 37:54

That is nails on a chalkboard to me.

SPEAKER_03 37:56

Yeah, and it doesn't that's not a natural way of speaking. Yeah, that is an assumed something. Um so there's a lot of different things. Trauma can make people go silent or small. Um there's just so many things that, and I think even genealogy, you know, just even your your ancestors, we're all the epigenetics are saying we're carrying trauma, not trauma and gifts from our ancestors. So I think there's just a uh it's quite uh a construction of popsicle sticks and duct tape, and not generally not much on purpose. And so to deconstruct it and open it into more wholeness is so fun, and you're right, it doesn't take that long. Just all of a sudden you start thinking, like, oh, what am I hearing? You know, what am I hearing over there? Or I'm not connecting with this person. What if I try a little ear? You know, we all know that. We can see the eyes go dead and they start leaning back. Yeah, but you could just play a little bit with, oh, do you want a little fire? Okay, now we got engaged. Oh, we got a smile, we're good to go.

SPEAKER_01 39:14

Yeah. Uh I like that. I think what's cool is you can kind of decipher or explore what maybe you typically settle in, and then again look at your audience and how can I shift my voice? I mean, they say what 80% of communication is nonverbal, and 30% of that is your tone or your vocal quality. And then it's of course like body language, and yes, a piece of it is what you're saying, but I like that we're kind of zoning in on the tone part of, and I would also assume that we're kind of reverse engineering of can I use my fire voice when I'm not feeling confident to help me feel confident? Is that something that we do too?

SPEAKER_03 40:03

Oh my gosh, so often.

SPEAKER_01 40:05

Yeah, and like your power pose, but with your voice. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 40:09

It's exactly. I was just about to say that it's like your power pose with your voice, and so many people say, Oh, but this doesn't feel authentic to me. And it's like, well, get a bigger story about who you are, you know. It's uh so we are affecting ourselves all the time. We're affecting other people, but we're also affecting our own nervous system, our own mood. And so, um, you know, if if people are tired or depressed, you know, especially when I was taking care of my mom, I knew by the low of hello whether it was a good day or bad day for her. Wow. Right? Because we're the people we know well. Yeah, you know, you can say, hello, what's wrong?

SPEAKER_01 40:50

Yeah, my friend said that to me today. She's like, What's wrong? I'm like, nothing, I'm just tired. But she could hear it, yeah. She could hear it.

SPEAKER_03 40:57

Exactly. We're leaking information all the time.

Why We Default To One Voice

SPEAKER_01 41:01

This is wild. So, one of the other things I feel like I could just talk about this forever, but you are very cool and you do so many things. And one of the other things that I wanted to touch on before we run out of time is using your voice in connecting with the community and connecting with others. And I said this before we hit record. I I think that it's always going to be such a relevant conversation topic of how can we continue to find connection in a world that can be very disconnected. I don't really want to say that we are disconnected because I think that's a choice. And I mean, we are connecting right now, even though we're not connecting in person and physically, we're still there's still a lot of ways to connect using social media. Uh, but the voice, I think you have a really beautiful perspective on how we can use our communal sound to connect with each other. And I would love for you to share that piece of your journey.

SPEAKER_03 42:07

Oh, I would love to.

SPEAKER_01 42:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 42:09

So I've always known that people needed to sing together. And I think I got it through my grandfather, he was a soloist and a choir director in Iowa. He sang on the radio, he had a gorgeous voice. My mother, his daughter was a solo singer, music major, uh, children's church choir director, piano teacher. Um, my brother was a choir director. So I feel like I just have always known that people need to sing together. And I got the pleasure of good choirs like you, but I also noticed how many people didn't feel like they could sing in any way because they didn't read music or they weren't trained or they weren't perfect or they couldn't perform or they couldn't make their living at it. And so decades ago, I just started getting people in a room without paper to sing in the oral tradition. So here's a line da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

SPEAKER_05 43:00

And then they go da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

Singing Together As Real Connection

SPEAKER_03 43:02

We learn it by ear. You don't have where there's no performing, there's no perfection, it's a different group every time. And I built a whole community of people who sing this way in Minneapolis, where I lived for 40 years. And so it would it grew to the point where I'd have like 50 or 60 people in a great big circle in this beautiful room in a in a downtown church, and then we use it to raise money for a good cause. I didn't take money for that. That was sort of my philanthropy. And uh I fell in love with that kind of singing and connected with other people who were doing it around uh around and about, and uh still do lead that kind of singing because it's not enough just for one voice to get free. I think it's important for people to there's something that can happen when we sing together. This is my second TED talk. The first one was about the elements, and the second one was about the power of oral tradition community singing. And in the room I did that in, there were about a thousand people, and I had seen this phenomenon happen in groups of 50, 60, 100 people, where I would just start a song and then I would just abdicate leadership and let the group decide when it was over. And every time the group would decide on a dime that it was over, collective decision. And I was an organizational consultant for all these years, like doing team building exercises and things like that. And I was like, I could have just had them singing. There was a way that how do a thousand people tune in to each other, and it wasn't like a it was a hard stop. It wasn't it wasn't like a dribble dribble, it was a hard stop, and it often is a hard stop. And so that got that still has me going about what are the capacities that we have that are awakened by singing. It's been in every culture on the planet since forever. And now I have to say, uh it's gone quite huge in Minneapolis. I moved about an hour away in the middle of COVID. And I still go there. I was there last night. But there is a whole movement of singing resistance because of the uh occupation of ICE there for the last couple of months. And a whole bunch of my friends, singing friends, have created this singing resistance movement that's now going global. They have a toolkit and a guide uh guidebook and trainings for people who can be pod leaders. And I was doing in one of those trainings last night, and there's a young woman, a couple women from uh Minneapolis who said, Yeah, we we just put the word out and we can have 200 people show up and sing in the park. The deep winter in Minnesota, and I'm like, I could not have imagined in my wildest dreams that what I was doing all those years of just gathering people would explode. And it's been happening, you know, this singing, oral tradition singing movement has been cooking around, you know, um singing camps and people who had been doing this and making a lot of beautiful songs. But I could never, I think their their little uh signal group was up to like 7,000 people and growing just in the Twin Cities metropolitan area. So um it's beautiful to see um there was a whole group walking down the streets where people were shut in their houses because they were afraid to leave. And they've been shut in for weeks and weeks, and so there they all are, it's like stupid below zero outside.

SPEAKER_04 46:45

And there were like 600 people walking through these neighborhoods singing um Hong Dones Here comes the dawn in Beautiful Harmony.

SPEAKER_03 47:05

This is a song by my friend Heidi Wilson, and it's become one of the kind of anthems of this movement. So it's been quite something uh to see uh huge outgrowth and appetite to sing together for some reason, besides standing up in front of a group and doing it perfectly, which I think is great. But there's something purposeful about you know, getting a group of 2,000 people together and singing for an evening and raising$70,000 in rent relief for people who haven't been able to go to work.

SPEAKER_01 47:42

I can't I can't imagine. My small connection is when I sang in in high school, and I sang in uh like the select choir, and I I remember this one. I don't know why I have this memory. Maybe it was the last concert that I did, is the memory, but um just in general of singing, creating something absolutely touching and beautiful and like soul, soul crushing with people that I mean you come to love in a choir, but I remember we sang, I don't even know what song it was, but it's a very hard vocally um um created song. Like it was my select choir was pretty small, so we basically all were singing our own part. So if you're familiar with choir, like you can have soprano alto bass, but you can also have soprano one, soprano two, alto one, alto two. So this song was all of them is like an eight-part harmony, and we worked so hard and we sang it in a church, and like there was a lot of dissonant chords, so like the ones that kind of feel like like you know, and then they have to resolve. Like it was just one of the most beautiful songs, and it's still like talking about it right now, it gives me goosebumps. So, singing collectively, that's I mean, that's my connection, is that I have in my life is having that that connection of your voices coming together and making something beautiful. And you're right, it doesn't have to be perfect, and it doesn't have to be vocally challenging, and everyone can be singing the same notes, and it's really just about creating like you're creating something with people, and I can't imagine I would love to do something that you're explaining, like that you are sharing because the idea of creating something so beautiful with people that you don't even know, and like having that heart connection for the same cause with people that you might not even ever speak to. I mean, 7,000 people or 200 people, even like, how are you ever gonna talk to those 200 people? Um, such a beautiful way. I mean, just talking about it, I feel connected to to the whole cause, like such a beautiful way to connect with and get out of your own head. Get out of your own head, get out of your own life, and just get into. I think your voice singing does bring you into your body, like you're just very present. What note am I singing right now? What what lyrics am I supposed to be singing? And you get out of like, ooh, we all live so much in our heads, right?

Singing As Community And Resistance

SPEAKER_03 50:31

Right, right. And it's beautiful to watch what happens. Yeah. My nephew and I, my nephew's trained in my work. I had about 75 people trained in my work so far, and more all the time. But my nephew and I lead a weekend voice retreat uh here in my little town. We're we're doing one in April. And um we we are definitely gonna take a before and after picture. And we do a lot of stuff with the elements, extended range vocalizing. He's done a lot of like circle singing, like what Bobby McFarran does, improvising, you know, composing in the moment. So we do a lot of that, we play, uh, we move our bodies, we sing a lot of these kinds of simple or less simple songs, depending on who's there. And by the time we are done, I I look at those pictures over all the years. Like before he he and I did it, my voice teacher from France, Charles Ryan, would come. We taught together for over 20 years, and um but the people just get like if I I don't see auras, but you know, it's like they are some shiny, shiny people by the end of that weekend of just being deeply human and expressing all of our humanity, not just the like nice made for public consumption. We get into shadowy, uh you know, animal shrieking, um carrying on, and it's all that's all playful. Um but boy, it's just and then I also see that in the the way people are after singing. Even last night, just for two hours, we did this little training, and oh my gosh, people were uh we had to practically kick them out the door because they were all in love. You know, they just had all fallen in love with each other and we made harmonies and you know, I like a song that if you don't know anything, I harmony is heaven to me. Yeah, it really is. I think that feeling of being held, like you described it so beautifully, being in that uh I don't know, it's like you're in this hologram of sound, uh, and you're a part of it and you're different, you're a part of it, and you're different as a whole, and other things. But um, to teach a song that has like, okay, here's one part. If you like it, go over there. Here's another part, if you like it, go over there. You don't have to know about harmony, you can still experience it.

SPEAKER_01 52:49

And it's so fun. So fun. Sign me up for that weekend. Speaking up, tell people how they can connect with you. I know that you do a retreat as well. I don't know if that's the weekend that you were just sharing, but how can people continue to connect with you? How can people learn more? Maybe if they're interested in exploring their own voice, what are your offerings?

SPEAKER_03 53:13

Oh, I have a bunch of things on my website. I'm in development now of a self-directed course for the five elements that'll be coming out in the next couple months. Because I have I have people in you know different parts of the world, you know, to get them. I I do a live full voice fundamentals class that's coming up at the end of March. I don't know when this is gonna air, but that's that's I do those pretty regularly. It's a five-week online live thing to go more in depth with the five elements. Um I do a re I do a different bunch of different retreats. I'm getting ready to go to Mexico for a singing retreat uh that I do every March. And just self-expression.

SPEAKER_11 53:53

It's not like singing, yeah, a lot of singing.

SPEAKER_03 53:58

And then I also have been doing these um retreats that I really like called Living Dying Music Industry. So I've had a little comfort choir, we sing for people who are near the end of life, and have just been around a lot of death and dying, and so I'm doing one of those at Kirkridge this fall in Pennsylvania, Kirkridge Center, and then another one at the Whitby Institute in Washington. But all this stuff is on my website. Um best way to get in touch with me. I also work one-on-one with people. And I'd love to hear, you know, if you have a question or a story, I I'm all over it. Reach out. I'd love to hear from any of your listeners because everybody's got a good story.

SPEAKER_01 54:41

Ah, everyone. Yeah, and it's important to be able to share your story, and I and I appreciate that about your work is unlocking this new invitation of being able to share your uniqueness, your story, your journey, your voice, your tone, whatever your message is. So I love that. I have, I have to, I would love to invite you to share what we talked about before we recorded. Is that what you're talking about actually? With I would call it looping, but you used a different um terminology. But you gave me a short demo of your beautiful song. Is this something that you do in your retreat and remind me what you call it?

SPEAKER_03 55:27

This is a little song, it's a little community song. I like to teach it. I have a looper because I'm only one voice, but yeah, so I'm using my looper, but mostly I compose it. I actually composed it last fall in my retreat with my nephew. I got this idea, you know, I was like, hey, here's a little group. You uh why don't you sing this? So uh I'm gonna I'm gonna lay it on you. So lay it on it. But usually I I do it in a group, but Okay. We like a looper, because then we don't need it to uh get it going. Makes sense.

SPEAKER_13 55:58

Um Your voice is a wonder. Uh uh. Your voice is a wonder, it's a wonder. Your voice is a wonder. Uh uh. Your voice is a wonder. Uh uh. Your voice is a wonder. Uh uh. Your voice is a wonder, it's a wonder.

SPEAKER_09 56:17

Your voice is a tour stand.

SPEAKER_07 56:23

Your fake.

SPEAKER_08 56:28

Your faith towards the city.

SPEAKER_13 57:03

Uh uh, your voice is a wonder. Uh uh, your voice is a wonder. It's a wonder.

SPEAKER_01 57:11

I love that. I love a good loop pedal. I don't know, I'm obsessed with it, but I can imagine I love any um, yeah, like call and response kind of loopy song. I think that's it's I it must just be something about my personality, like having your part become one of a whole, and then you're making this beautiful masterpiece together, and it's just you are singing one part, and you need people, you need the other voices.

SPEAKER_03 57:39

The thing is that I'm so excited, I just cut you off. I'm so sorry.

SPEAKER_00 57:43

No, you're good, you're good.

SPEAKER_03 57:46

I I say this often that this kind of community singing teaches us everything we didn't need to know about being in a community. Wow. Because yes, you have to do your part, you know, you have to step up and take responsibility for your voice. And then if you're with a a a subgroup, you know, uh then you need to like, oh, I need to like serve, I need to be a good team member here, so I'm gonna, you know, do right by my people. But then you also have to attend to the whole. And when I was a organizational consultant, I would often teach people around and and say, if you don't want to sing, that's fine, you can go over there and provide acoustics, that's fine. But most of the time, I was kind of irresistible. And I'd say, so, you know, and it would happen again and again that the tribes, the individual teams, um in the round would get kind of go off. You know, they'd get too loud or they get kind of tribal, and they would like that rhythm would get off and they'd forget they were part of a whole, which happens all the time. Organizations, families, communities, the world, period. And so it's like this is what it's like. It's me, we whole, me, we whole, me, we whole. And then I always invite them, after we get it, you know, if we get it, we'd always get it going, and then I'd say, okay, now we're starting again. Now let's make it beautiful. And do you know what, Hannah? They always did it. They didn't talk about like what that meant. We didn't have to get the flip chart out and make it list. I just say, okay, now make it beautiful. And there was something innately human that they knew how to do that. So your voice is a wonderful.

Loop Song And The Me-We-Whole Lesson

SPEAKER_01 59:34

Thank you so much for this conversation. I'm just my heart is just so full. This was so inspirational and empowering and gives you so many things to think about. With I mean, so many like I teach breath work, right? And and people are always like, oh, I breathe the wrong way. I know I breathe the wrong way. Like it's just bringing attention to something that we do every day, and you don't do it the wrong way. You're just learning new pieces of how you can approach your breath or your voice, and that's a really, really empowering tool that you're bringing to the world. So thank you for your beautiful tools and your beautiful energy and your wisdom, and thank you for sharing your voice with us today. I appreciate you so much.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:19

It was a blast, and you're my people. I think we I think we care a lot about the same things. So thank you for inviting me.